In the wee hours of April 30 morning student protesters occupied a building on Columbia University’s main campus escalating tensions at the university hours after administrators had begun suspending students who refused to leave a ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment.’
Hamilton Hall, the building at Columbia University that protesters occupied early Tuesday morning, has been occupied several times by student activists over the past half-century. It was last occupied in 1968 amid protests against the Vietnam War. Over several dozen protesters occupied the hall moving metal gates to barricade the doors, blocking entrances with wooden tables and chairs, and zip-tying doors shut.
The building was seized after demonstrators marched around the Manhattan campus to chants of “Free Palestine.” Around 1:40 a.m., protesters inside the hall unfurled a banner reading “Hind’s Hall”—renaming Hamilton after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. At around 6 a.m the university announced that it had closed the campus to everyone but students who live inside the dorms on campus and employees who provide essential services. “This access restriction will remain in place until circumstances allow otherwise,” it said in a statement.
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On Monday Columbia University began suspending students who refused to leave a ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ after negotiations with protesters failed and the students decided to ignore a warning that remaining would lead to their suspension and eviction.
Columbia said the nearly two-week-long protest violated university policies, created an unwelcoming and “intolerable” environment for Jewish students and that “external actors” have contributed to a “hostile environment” around university gates and it had become a “noisy distraction” for students.
‘Free Palestine’
Tensions have escalated at universities across the U.S. with Columbia under the spotlight since its leadership called the New York Police Department to break up anti-war protesters’ encampments. Encampments and sit-ins at universities across the country expanded following the arrests at Columbia earlier this month. Police have arrested students at top American universities including Harvard, Yale, New York University, and Columbia amid widespread protests in solidarity with Palestine amid Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza
Students continue to protest at an encampment supporting Palestinians at Columbia University, despite an afternoon deadline issued by university officials to disband or face suspension, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in New York City, U.S., April 29, 2024. | Photo Credit: Reuters
Meanwhile the University of Southern California cancelled its main commencement ceremony, citing safety concerns amid the protests. On Monday, chaos erupted at the University of Texas in Austin as law enforcement moved in to make arrests and forcibly dismantle a pro-Palestine protest encampment amid chants of “Free Palestine”.
On Monday morning, around 10 a.m., Columbia University administrators distributed a notice to the encampment stating that negotiations with student protest leaders were at an impasse.
‘Disclose! Divest’
The notices, viewed by this correspondent, asked protesters to identify themselves to a university official and sign a form agreeing to an alternative resolution for the university policy violations that the encampment posed. The university had told student demonstrators to vacate by 2 p.m. or else “be suspended pending further investigation” and barred from completing the spring semester.
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At the encampment, now in its second week, students voted nearly unanimously to stay put as participants chanted: “The more you try to silence us, the louder we will be.”
Students at the encampment, accompanied by numerous supporters comprising fellow students, staff, and faculty, spent a tense afternoon gathering around the location in a display of solidarity aimed at preventing the forceful removal of the tents. Around 2:45 p.m. — after the 2 p.m. warning time to leave — protesters marched around the encampment and chanted “Disclose! Divest! We will not slow, we will not rest!’” and “Free Palestine.”
Just outside the encampment, about a dozen faculty in yellow and orange safety vests also stayed behind, with several saying they planned to remain overnight to make sure their students’ right to protest was respected. As the 2 p.m. deadline neared, faculty members stood in front of the encampment linking their arms.
File picture of president of Columbia University Nemat Shafik | Photo Credit: AP
Jennifer Lena, an Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said she came to ensure that the students were safe from threats of eviction. “I am here to ensure that our students can speak their minds safely on campus... and I am here to make sure that they can continue to do that as safely as possible.”
On April 18, University president Minouche Shafik’s decision to authorise the NYPD’s sweep of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which led to the mass arrest of over 100 protesters, had left many community members stunned. Over 100 faculty members from the University on April 22 gathered on the campus for a walkout to condemn the suspension and arrests of students and call for amnesty and protection of academic freedom.
However, by 4 p.m., as uncertainty loomed while there were no signs of police intervention, majority of protesters started to scatter while some students and approximately 80 tents remained within the encampment. Around 5:30 p.m. Columbia University began suspending students who defied orders to vacate their pro-Palestinian protest by 2 p.m.
State troopers arrest a pro-Palestinian protester at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, Monday, April 29, 2024. | Photo Credit: AP
“We have begun suspending students,” Ben Chang, vice president for communications and a spokesperson for the university, said about three hours after the deadline passed. The university did not say how many students were suspended.
Mass arrests
Over the past two weeks hundreds of students have been arrested across U.S. for taking part in anti-war protests. The protesters at Columbia have inspired similar demonstrations on campuses across the country.
Columbia University doubled down on its stance regarding Israel making its position clear it ‘won’t’ divest from Israel’—a key demand of the students protesting in the encampment.
Sueda Polat, a student organiser with the encampment, said the university had not made significant concessions to the protesters’ main demand: divestment from companies with links to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Columbia had also stopped negotiating. As a result, she said, the students inside the encampment “will not be moved unless by force.”
Ms. Polat said university officials “have shown a clear disregard” for the protesters’ demands.
The university has been trying to avoid calling back the police, whose intervention on April 18 at the request of administrators came under heavy criticism and attracted a wave of angry protests.
“We called on NYPD to clear an encampment once,” Ms. Shafik, the University president, wrote in a statement to the community last Friday co-signed by the co-chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees. “But we all share the view, based on discussions within our community and with outside experts, that to bring back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus.”
Though Columbia had previously suspended approximately 50 students for participating in the initial encampment on an adjacent lawn, the action did not dissuade a broader coalition of protesters from establishing the current encampment.
Joseph Howley, Associate Professor at Columbia University, said, “first, for six months, the university has capitulated to the extremist ideological position that political speech about Palestine, on behalf of Palestine is anti-Semitic. It’s not true and is an extreme position and the university leadership keeps adopting it over and over again for no good reason.”
Mr. Howley was part of the faculty who joined members in encircling the encampment to protect the students on Monday.
“Second, the only thing that has increased in terms of anti-Semitism and other form of prejudicial harassment on and around this campus has been the university, calling the police last week making the campus a flashpoint attracting bad actors and radicals from all over the city. We have had ugly things said outside campus... while on campus, the encampment has been peaceful and calm, and orderly and on message. So if there’s a problem here, it’s being created by the university leadership and NYPD and political pressure from outside,” Mr. Howley added.
‘Intimidation tactic’
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student and the lead negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student coalition that has organised the encampment, called the deadline “just another intimidation tactic from the university”.
Columbia was the first institution struck by protests in support of the Palestinian cause, with students demanding that the school divest from investments that support weapons manufacturing and Israel amid the backdrop of the war on Gaza, in which more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the coalition organising the encampment protest, said in a statement on Monday: “These repulsive scare tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians. We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or we are moved by force.”
The group criticised the university’s “threat to mass suspend, evict and possibly expel students” with just hours’ notice as a violation of the school’s rules.
“We have paused negotiations until Columbia comes to the table in good faith, without the threat of violence. If the university does not come forward with real, concrete proposals that address our demands, we will have no choice but to escalate the intensity of protest on campus,” the group said.
Columbia University spokesperson did not respond to queries on whether the administration will allow NYPD on the campus again to disperse the students from the encampment.
(Anisha Dutta is a freelance journalist based in New York)
